Welcome to Part 3 of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to drive new visitors automatically to your website using WordPress.
In Part One of this series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to generating automated web traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress web site, all you have to do to begin attracting new web traffic is add web content on a consistent basis!)
In Part 2, we focused on critical setup decisions. We helped you understand the best way to get started if you don’t have a website yet, how to set everything up if you already have a website, and what to do if your existing website was built with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up a WordPress web site on your domain)
In this article, we will discuss the configuration phase of this process. We will help you understand why an expertly configured WordPress site is different, and just what kind of work needs to be done to make sure that when all is set up and fully configured, you can start bringing web traffic automatically when you add fresh content on your site.
WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint – Configuration Phase
Finding ways to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by most business owners as one of the greatest challenges they face online. Also, the business landscape is becoming increasingly more competitive on a global scale and businesses are looking for any advantage they believe will help them improve their performance online.
Having the ability to automatically generate traffic on demand can provide website owners with a tremendous advantage over the competition. For WordPress users, having an expertly configured website means having an immediate advantage from the word “go”.
The Difference Is In The Way Your Site Is Configured
There is a significant difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a site that has been professionally set up by a website-building expert but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here’s a simple way to understand the difference:
An expertly configured WordPress website gives you a professional web presence plus an automated online business marketing tool!
(An expertly configured site gives you a web presence with a built-in automated online business marketing process!)
Not only is more work required to build and integrate an automated online business marketing system into your website, but also a special type of expertise.
To illustrate this here is a story.
Knowing Where To Tap
All is going well in the gizmo assembly factory when everything suddenly just stops.
No one can figure out what’s happened and so the manager decides to call in an expert.
The expert arrives shortly afterward and, without uttering a word, heads immediately towards the control box. After staring silently at the wiring diagrams for less than 3 minutes, the expert then takes out a teensy-weensy hammer from his tool belt and makes a very gentle tap near the left corner of the box.
Immediately, everything springs back to life.
The manager is greatly relieved as he thanks the expert, who leaves as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days after resolving the incident, the manager receives a service bill for $5,000.
Outraged and furious, the factory manager rings the expert. Demanding to know why the expert has charged them such an exorbitant fee for so little time spent delivering such minimal amount of work, he then requests an itemized invoice and hangs up.
The next day, an invoice arrives in the manager’s intray. Upon opening it, this is what he sees:
The #1 challenge most businesses face online is driving new visitors to their sites.
How much money did the gizmo factory stand to lose when production stopped working and no one in the factory floor had the expertise to fix it? Did the expert not have the right to get paid fairly for years spent building up the knowledge, skills and expertise that allowed him to fix a potentially costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have a WP web site configured so all you had to do is publish content to it and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and dozens of other traffic-generating web properties would be immediately notified, how much time and money would you save?
(How much time and money would you save if you could automate the process of driving traffic to your website?)
Although many experts often make difficult solutions look simple, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site involves more than adding some pages with content and configuring a few internal settings. It involves knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things like:
- Which programs you need to install for specific things to occur on your site.
- Which services need to be set up and activated to achieve certain results
- Which options need to be configured in order to make sure things function how you want, etc.
(Generating traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
Although this part of the traffic automation system may not seem so technically difficult, it can be quite involved and complicated. This is because it’s not as easy as installing a plugin, tweaking some options and settings in your dashboard area or clicking on a button or two … it’s all this and so much more.
The configuration phase involves the integration of different parts including your web server, your WP site, and various external sites …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring some settings in WordPress)
If the activities involved in the configuration process were to be flowcharted, it would look like this …
(A simplified diagram showing the activities involved in the configuration process)
Let’s examine these steps.
Your Web Server – Configuration
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your web-hosting account for website installation purposes. We’re talking about tweaking settings in your web-hosting account that affect how you will handle web traffic …
(During the configuration phase, your web-hosting account settings need to be fine-tuned for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all web traffic is welcome traffic. Some of the web traffic your site will attract will be unwanted traffic like bot spam, security threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This part of the configuration process, therefore, is about planning for good and bad traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This can include looking at things like configuring spam protection and security threat prevention, to configuring your domain and email redirections, setting up htaccess file redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your webhosting settings for handling things like emails, page errors, etc?)
After your server settings have been fine-tuned and configured, the next step of the configuration phase is to set up various external sites.
External Services
The basic idea of setting up external sites is that all of your content is published from a central location (your WordPress site) and from there, it then gets automatically distributed to other components of your web traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
After incorporating these external services into your network, content linking back to your site gets automatically added to your search, social and aggregator accounts. Your content and site will receive additional exposure online, helping you tap into new sources of traffic.
Some of the sites and services will need to be set up before configuring your site’s settings to speed up the process and some will need to be done later, during the automation phase.
For example, here are just some of the accounts you will need to have set up:
Google Webmaster Tools
(Google Webmasters)
Google Webmasters lets you inform Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides you with useful information, SEO tools and diagnostic reports about your website.
After setting up your account with Google Webmaster Tools, the information can be used to integrate and automate web traffic-related settings in WordPress and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your site’s traffic results, SEO, marketing efforts, sales conversions, and more, by tracking all user engagement, pages visited, keywords searched for, organic referrals, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account has been set up, tracking information can be added to WordPress using a simple plugin used with other applications and reporting tools.
Bing Data And Tools
(Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmasters. Once your Bing Webmaster Tools account has been set up, the account details can be used to automate web traffic settings in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO (see further below) and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part Two, WordPress provides users with the option of a hosted vs self-hosted website. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress platform if you plan to grow a professional web presence.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides some great features, which a number of WordPress plugins can access. We recommend setting up an account with WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll show you how to integrate this into your automated web traffic system in Part Four of this series.
Social Media Accounts
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media sites and attract new traffic to your site)
You will need to set up your social accounts in order to configure these as part of your traffic generation system.
Once you have set up and configured everything, you will be able to syndicate your content automatically to your social media sites and attract new visitors to your site.
You should set up accounts and profiles with all of the well-known social networks – Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.
There are loads of social bookmarking sites you can You can syndicate your content to many social bookmarking sites. You don’t need to go crazy, just choose those that will work with your system and/or content syndication tools (we will cover some of these tools in greater detail further below and in the Automation phase).
(You can syndicate your content to lots of social sites. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Platforms, RSS Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of new online web platforms and content aggregators that can serve as secondary sources of traffic. Some are free or provide free levels, and some offer a range of pricing plans.
For example, here is a content aggregator that allows you to add your WordPress blog feed …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse)
RebelMouse is an aggregator for your RSS feeds and social profiles. Your content displays in a Pinterest-like format and users can follow your page.
There are many different technologies and third-party applications you can add to your own traffic blueprint. Please contact us if you would like to explore some of these further and discuss a configuration plan to suit your needs.
After you have configured your web server and set up external site accounts, it’s time to configure your site.
WordPress Configuration
The first step in configuring your WordPress site for traffic is to ensure that its global settings have been set up correctly.
Let’s go over some key areas.
WordPress – Global Settings
The WordPress administration area contains a Settings section that allows you to set up your site’s global settings …
(WordPress settings menu)
General Settings
Content entered into fields like Site Title and Tagline can influence your site’s SEO, search indexing, etc …
(Settings Menu – General Settings Screen)
Writing
The Writing Settings section contains an important and frequently overlooked automated traffic notification system …
(WordPress Settings – Writing Settings)
As described in the Update Services section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you have purposely chosen to prevent search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically notify the list of services entered into the Update Services text area
With an ‘out of the box’ WordPress installation, only one service is listed …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature)
WordPress lets you notify dozens of update services automatically …
(You can notify dozens of update services automatically with WordPress!)
Download A Comprehensive List Of Ping Services For Your WordPress Site!
Click the link below to download a comprehensive list of reliable and authoritative ping services for your WordPress site or blog:
Download A List Of Ping Services For Your WordPress Site
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Note: If you need help setting up the list of ping services on your site, we recommend using a professional web services provider. You can find professional WordPress service providers in our WordPress Services Directory.
Reading
This section affects how visitors will see your content when they visit your home page and blog pages.
The syndication settings in this section can influence web traffic. For example, choosing to display the full text vs summaries of your post, affects how your content appears in RSS readers and blog post digests, and could impact someone’s decision to explore your site further, and whether or not they will visit your blog to get the rest of the content from summaries, or read the content in full without the need to click through to your site.
The main setting here as far as your traffic system is concerned is whether the Search Engine Visibility check box is enabled or not.
Generally, you want search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked enables your site to automatically ping various update services whenever a new post gets published (see Writing Settings above). Unless you have a specific reason to discourage search indexing spiders from visiting your site, leave this box unchecked …
(Settings Menu – Reading Settings)
Discussion Settings
Although this section is mostly concerned with how users engage with content on your site, you have the option to allow notifications to blogs linked to from your posts, and to allow link notifications from other blogs (pingbacks and trackbacks). This can work for you, but it can also drive bad traffic in the form of SPAM comments …
(Settings Menu – Discussion Settings)
Permalinks
Your Permalink settings allow you to display posts with SEO-friendly URLs …
(Settings Menu – Permalink Settings)
Here are some of the options for configuring your post permalinks …
(Configuring search-friendly URLS)
To learn more about setting up WordPress permalinks, go here: Using Permalinks To Improve Your WordPress SEO
Configuring Settings – Plugins
WordPress provides users with plugins that help to add almost every kind of functionality to your site, including plugins that add traffic generation capabilities.
Let’s look at examples of plugin categories and plugins that can help drive more visitors to your site
Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your website for handling both good traffic and bad traffic. No blog is guaranteed immunity from a cyber attack.
(WordPress Security Plugins stop bad traffic from causing your website harm)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your blog invisible to bot and hacker attacks.
Go here to learn more:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive more traffic by improving your website’s SEO …
(Yoast SEO – WP Plugins For SEO)
A plugin like Yoast SEO can significantly improve your SEO. Once properly configured, this plugin not only makes your web pages easier for search engines like Google to find and index, it allows you to configure how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media pages, e.g. Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.
WordPress Social Plugins
Allowing your visitors to easily share your content online can help boost traffic to your site, especially if your site provides content that adds real value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing buttons to their website using free or inexpensive plugins)
WordPress users can easily add social sharing buttons to their website with free or inexpensive WordPress plugins.
Most social plugins allow you to specify which sites your content can be shared to, embed social buttons into your content, set up default update notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of shares), etc. Some social plugins even allow you to protect content which users can unlock by linking or tweeting your page.
Themes
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that help improve your site’s traffic generation capabilities.
For example, in addition to options and settings for configuring the layout and design of your website, many themes also give you options for improving SEO and site linking structure for better indexing, add analytics snippets, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WordPress themes like Graphene (a highly customizable free theme) come with built-in traffic optimization features)
With many quality themes, adding social sharing features to your website is as easy as clicking a few buttons to enable the feature …
(Many WordPress themes provide built-in social sharing features)
WordPress Traffic Configuration – Additional Areas
Last (but by no means least) in the web traffic system configuration process, are the things that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
This includes:
Website Compliance Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for a growth in traffic, it’s important to plan not only for both good and bad traffic but also for all the things that can go wrong when more and more people find and begin to visit your website.
If you do any type of business online (or plan to), you need to make sure that your website is compliant with regulatory agencies.
(Does Your Website Comply With All Legal Requirements?)
If you need help adding legal pages to WordPress, see this article:
WordPress Categories & Tags
WordPress categories & tags help improve traffic by improving your site’s SEO.
(Categories help search engines index your website, which helps to increase traffic.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, your site’s tags and categories should be set up earlier on, during the Website Planning Process.
When configuring your website or blog to automate and improve traffic, you will want to review and make sure that the categories and tags you have set up.
Add A Site Map
A site map that lists all of your site’s pages and posts to visitors is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external tools find your site’s content …
(Site Map – great for site visitors and beneficial for traffic too!)
An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are not the same things. Although search engines like Google will index your site just from an XML sitemap (which plugins like Yoast SEO can provide – see earlier section), making it easier for visitors to find more pages on your site can result in increased traffic.
404 Page Not Found – A Source Of Lost Traffic Opportunities!
When visitors searching online for your site type in the wrong web address or click on a link pointing to a page on your website that no longer exists, they are greeted with a 404 error page …
(A WordPress 404 Error Page)
A 404 page can be configured to funnel visitors to your functional pages …
(Configuring your 404 Error Page allows you to recover web traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 page can be set up in your web server, there are several WordPress plugins that allow you to easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress admin.
WordPress Traffic System: Configuration Process – Summary
Once your WordPress site has been fully set up and expertly configured, all you need to do then is publish new content on a regular basis to attract new traffic.
The process of expertly configuring a WordPress site, however, can be quite involved and elaborate and requires the configuration and integration of a number of different elements and web properties …
(Traffic System – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The expertise required to perform the configuration stage of the traffic automation process can take some web professionals a long time to learn.
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate the process. This step is explained in the next section of our WordPress Traffic Blueprint series.
This is the end of Section 3
To read more, click here:
This tutorial is part of an article series aimed at helping you learn how to grow your business and drive traffic organically with a WordPress website or blog and proven marketing methods that are easy to implement.
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"If you're new to WordPress, this can stand on its own as a training course and will stay with you as you progress from beginner to advanced and even guru status." - Bruce (Columbus, Ohio)
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